The January to March 2015 session was the final version of the course, but it remains open until March 2016 so that those interested can register and access all the materials. All assignments are available to try but will not score or be eligible for a statement of accomplishment.

You can continue to use the course discussion forums to raise issues, ask questions of your fellow participants and describe programming assignment issues or creative challenge artifacts you create. We encourage you to continue to contribute to the course wiki which also remains available until March 2016.

From April to June 2016 the course will be accessible as an archive to those already registered, but after that date Coursera will no longer support the platform on which this course is built. The course materials and videos are available at the following alternative URLs at the University of Edinburgh:

• http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/plan/ooc/ (AI Planning Course Home Page)
• http://media.aiai.ed.ac.uk/Project/AIPLAN/ (Index to access all course materials and videos)
• http://bit.ly/aiplanmooc (Videos on YouTube)

Fri 6 Mar 2015 10:00 AM CET

Your final grade and, if you passed at any level of participation, your Statement of Accomplishment are now available via your Course Records Page. You can obtain your final Course Badge here.

All answers can be found via the "Assignments and Exams" tab and then the "Assignments and Exam Index". If you look at an attempt for each assignment and exam under "Show Previous Attempts" and hit "Review" then the fully exposed answers and option level explanations now show.

The numbers achieving a pass at the various levels are:


Further class data is available here. The numbers of students achieving various scores are shown below. Those scoring less than 20% are not shown.

Fri 6 Mar 2015 12:59 AM CET

It would be very helpful to us if you could complete the short Post-course Survey whether or not you completed any assessments for the course.

Tue 3 Mar 2015 10:00 AM CET

Tue 3 Mar 2015 12:59 AM CET

The class is now complete. The due date for the final exams, creative challenge and programming assignment is March 1st. Please note that a one day hard deadline allowance is given to assist students in all time zones, but that no extension is possible after that.

You can already check your own "Effective Scores" which represents the highest score you have achieved on the attempts you make before the deadlines on the Awareness Level Final Exam (40 marks), the Foundation Level Final Exam (30 marks), the Creative Challenge (10 marks) and the two Programming Assignments (10 marks each) via the "Assignments and Exams" tab and the link there to the index of your own scores.

Final grades will be calculated and checks made soon after the hard deadline. Statements of Accomplishment and appropriate Course Badges will be available as soon as possible thereafter and we will notify you by e-mail when those are ready. We estimate that this process will be complete by March 7th. Preliminary details on the grading process and final stages of the course here.

Mon 23 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

The currently open assignments which count for the final assessment on the course are:
     Programming Assignment 2 - due Mar 1st
     Creative Challenge - due Mar 1st

The final exams for the Awareness Level and the Foundation Level are now available and count towards the final scores on this course. Note that for Foundation Level you must complete both exams.
     Awareness Level - Final Exam - due Mar 1st
     Foundation Level - Final Exam - due Mar 1st

More details and due dates are described via the "Assignments and Exams" left hand navigation tab.

Wed 18 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

Join in a virtual world class get together on Tuesday 17-Feb-2015 20:00 UT/GMT at The Venue@Vue in Second Life.  Note the time is one hour later than the usual time we have met at. This is likely to be the final Virtual World meet up for the class.

Information to help you get a (free) avatar and get started in Second Life is here. Try to set up media playback and check you can at least hear voice. Other virtual world meetings at various times will be arranged to try to allow participants with a range of study times and in various time zones to take part.

Sat 14 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

In the final week of the AI Planning course we look at plan execution, taking a specific application to deep space mission autonomy. We also give a summary of the common themes found in AI planning methods used in practical applications. We finish up by considering the broader techniques needed both before and after planning to be able to create and use plans intelligently. This includes knowledge engineering for planning domains, time and resource scheduling.

In this final week there are also the Awareness Level and Foundation Level exams to complete. The Awareness Level exam is intended to be straightforward and is designed as a check that you really have met our requirements to be able to offer you the Awareness Level award on the course, which we expect everyone will achieve if you made it to week 5 or have the time to catch up in this final week. The final programming assignment on the course is also still open.

This Week's Feature is on "AI Planning for Space" by Brad Clement from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA. Hear about the rich history and development of AI planners as used at NASA, ESA and elsewhere, and understand the types of applications of AI planning in a range of past, current and future space missions.

More details of the requirements for all levels of participation on the course are accessible through the link to "Assignments and Exams".

Fri 13 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

This week's topic is Graphplan and Advanced Heuristics. You will hear from a winner of a number of the AI International Planning Competitions, Prof. Dr. Jörg Hoffmann, about one of the hottest topics in AI planning during the last decade and see some of the fastest AI planners available today.

"Awareness Level" participants should as usual watch the videos marked with ♦

At the "Performance Level" the second and final programming assignment is now available. The first programming assignment and the creative challenge continue to be open.

Fri 6 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

Experience on an earlier course indicates a "catch up" break about now is wise. Week 3 and week 4 are the periods with the most video material, and when the initial Performance Level assignments are available. This break period in the course is designed to allow all students to catch up.

The Mid-course Quizzes are available for you to self check your progress and understanding of the materials to date. The Creative Challenge and Programming Assignment 1 are available for you to work on. The discussion forum and other parts of the course community social platform are available for you to seek help from other participants.

Week 4 video lectures and Programming Assignment 2 will be available for preview part way through this week for those wanting to move on to that material early.

Mon 2 Feb 2015 10:00 AM CET

The Homework and Mid Course Quizzes are optional and are to assist you in your studies. They do not count towards the final scores on this course.
     Homework - Course Reading - due Feb 15th
     Awareness Level - Mid Course Quiz - due Feb 15th
     Foundation Level - Mid Course Quiz - due Feb 15th

The currently open assignments which count for the final assessment on the course are:
     Programming Assignment 1 - due Feb 15th
     Creative Challenge - due Mar 1st
     Programming Assignment 2 will be available in week 4 of the course.
     Final Exams will be available in week 5 of the course.

More details and due dates are described via the "Assignments and Exams" left hand navigation tab.

Fri 30 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

Version: 27-Jan-2015 - based on sample of 2,784 AI Planning MOOC 2015 respondents from 115 countries.
More details of the course surveys and an interactive version of the map are available here.

Tue 27 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

In week three we move from state-space search methods to searching in "plan-space" where search space nodes are partial plans. We cover Simple Task Network (STN) planning and begin to address Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning, a technique used in most practical planners today.

As this week's features we are very pleased to welcome Dr. David Wilkins - Senior Research Scientist at SRI International's AI Center, the creator of the SIPE-2 Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planner incorporating a rich set of technical features and which is used in a range of practical applications, and Dr. Alex Champandard of AIGameDev in Austria on AI Planning for Games.

The mid course quizzes this week allow you to check your progress. They do not count for the final score, but we strongly suggest you test your understanding on them, and use them to get a feel for what will come in the actual exams in the final week. If you submit one of the Mid Course Quizzes, you will earn your second course "badge". More details on course badges here.

At the "Performance Level" the first programming assignment and the creative challenge continue to be open.

Fri 23 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

In week two we describe state-space search, heuristic search methods and the influential STRIPS representation for plans.

As this week's feature, we are delighted to welcome Nils Nilsson - Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and previously Director of the SRI International AI Center - a pioneer of AI planning who helped create the Shakey robot. His video provides some background on the invention of the A* search algorithm and the influential STRIPS planner.

For those wanting to follow the Awareness Level of the course you should watch the video lectures marked with a ♦ plus the feature video. For the Foundation and Performance levels you need to watch all videos.

For the Performance Level of the course Programming Assignment 1 and a special Creative Challenge are available. Even if your main interest is programming, we suggest you also try to create a digital artifact for the creative challenge. With a good score on the Foundation Level exam and completing the Creative Challenge, we have designed the scoring so you can "just" achieve a Performance Level award without engaging in the programming assignments.

More details of the week 2 materials can be found via the Week-by-Week link in the left column.

Fri 16 Jan 2015 10:01 AM CET

Congratulations to all of you who have successfully started the AI Planning MOOC, and thanks for joining in. If you made it to this stage you have already earned your first course "badge" - for those of you that like the idea of "gamification" in education!

You are now able to use this badge on your own web pages, blogs, etc. And you can look forward to replacing it with a mid course badge, and an achievement badge at the end of the course. See details of AI Planning Course Badges. Now go to level 2.

Fri 16 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

In week one we give an overview of planning and the approach taken in this course. We set AI planning in the context of task assignment, plan execution and communication with people using plans. We list some of the very wide range of research areas being explored in the field of AI planning.

Each week there will be a "feature" video - this week's topic is "AI Planning for Robots".

For those wanting to follow the Awareness Level of the course, as described in the "Course Information" link in the left hand column, you should watch video lectures marked with a ♦ including the feature video. You can watch them at any time during the whole course, and need not view them all at once this week.

A number of readings on AI planning are suggested as homework, most with on-line PDF copies available, to complement the material covered in the lectures.

We also encourage you to start to use the course social platform including the discussion forums, the course wiki (which will continue to be available beyond the end of the course as a continuing repository of useful information to assist you), share useful information via twitter with hash tag #aiplan, and to get a virtual world avatar and try the (experimental) virtual world meeting spaces to see if they are useful to you. The first virtual world meeting will act as an initial get together and assist those new to virtual worlds.

The discussion forums are already active and have a lot of fascinating information on the interests of MOOC participants. Scan these if you have time or if you have questions, but don't be put off and think you have missed something.

Please take a moment to complete the pre-course "getting to know you" survey so we can get some feedback on your motivation for taking the course and level of knowledge as we begin.

Thanks to those members of the class from the AI planning community who are supporting fellow students by acting as Community TAs.

More details of the week 1 materials can be found via the Week-by-Week link in the left column.

Fri 9 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

 

The course aims to provide a foundation in artificial intelligence techniques for planning, with an overview of the wide spectrum of different problems and approaches, including their underlying theory and their applications.

You can engage with the course at various levels of participation from an awareness level (a few hours a week), through the core foundation level (5-6 hours a week) to the performance level requiring the completion of programming or creative assignments (8 hours a week or more).

Thu 1 Jan 2015 10:00 AM CET

Check out the Pre-course link for things you can do to make sure you are ready when the course formally starts on 12th January 2015.

The Discussion Forums are already active and enable MOOC participants to share their interests. Scan these if you have time, but don't be put off and think you have missed something.

Please take a moment to complete the pre-course survey so we can get some feedback on your motivation for taking the course and level of knowledge as we begin.

Thu 1 Jan 2015 1:00 AM CET